For some reason, even though I have zero interest in hot air balloons, I always love seeing photos like this of their shows. I think that's such a beautiful image.

Ti has been to a hot air balloon show before, as far as I can recall. Think I enjoyed looking at his pics of that.

I went to one years ago with about 40 Balloons.After sunset they inflated them all while they were on the ground and turned up the gas to make 40 giant lanterns,very impressive.I have pics but they're 35mm prints - pre digital.

Not necessarily the picture itself, but more the subject of the picture.

For the uninitiated, it's a Spitfire Mk.Ia on its second flight after an epic rebuild and restoration project co-ordinated at the Imperial War Musuem, Duxford.

So what? I hear you cry. It was shot down over Calais during the evacuation of the British troops in June 1940, was buried under the beach for 40 years until excavated in the early 1980s. The sands hadn't been kind to the airframe, and it suffered further damage during the recovery, but there was enough of the airframe for the basis of a restoration. It ultimately led to the aircraft flying for the first time in over 70 years on Thursday evening (1st September).

It features all the correct fittings and systems for an earyl-model Spitfire - including the fiddly pneumatic undercarriage handpump which was a peculiarity of the early Spitfires.

And it's stunning, to boot. The colour scheme is 100% accurate, right down to the stencilling on the airframe, and the correct black/white undersides which were an aid to recognition during that fateful event.

Left, derived from a photo taken by Philip Rickerby, the oldest known footprint made by an anatomically modern human over 100 thousand years ago in South Africa. Right, the footprint of Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the lunar surface made on July 20, 1969.

< Message edited by Woger -- 3/10/2011 1:49:21 PM >

_____________________________

Eddie: "Weve been burgaled" Richie: You may have been, but I have never in my life. As a christian I am so tightly clenched, oh you mean burgaled - - - There were originally five horsemen of the apocalypse. Jack Bauer said he would travel by foot